No. XXII. BOTANICAL APPENDIX. BY ROBERT BROWN, ESQ. E.R.SS. L. & E ., F .L .S . The Herbarium formed during the expedition, chiefly by the late Dr. Oud- ney, contains specimens, more or less perfect, of about three hundred species. Of these one hundred belong to the vicinity of Tripoli; fifty were collected in the route from Tripoli to Mourzuk, thirty-two in Fezzan, thirty-three on the journey from Mourzuk to Kouka, seventy-seven in Bomou, and sixteen in Haussa or Soudan. These materials are too inconsiderable to enable us to judge correctly of the vegetable productions of any of the countries visited by the mission, and especially of the more interesting regions, Bomou and Soudan. For the limited extent of the herbarium, the imperfect state of many of the specimens, and the very scanty information to be found respecting them, either in the herbarium itself, or in the Journal of the collector, it is unfortunately not difficult to account. Dr. Oudney was sufficiently versed in Botany, to have formed collections much more extensive and instructive, had the advancement of natural history been the principal purpose of his’mission. His time and attention, however, were Chiefly occupied by the more important objects of the expedition : as a botanist he had no assistant; and the state of his health during his residence in Bomou must, in a great degree, have rendered him unable to collect or observe the natural productions of that country. For the few specimens belonging to Soudan, we are indebted to Captain Clapperton, who, after the death of Dr. Oudney, endeavoured to preserve the more striking and useful plants which he met with. His collection was originally more considerable; but before it reached England, many of the specimens were entirely destroyed. It still includes several of the medicinal plants of the natives; but these being without either flowers or fruit, cannot be determined. In the whole herbarium, the number of undescribed species hardly equals twenty; and among these not one new genus is found. The plants belonging to the vicinity of Tripoli were sent to me by Dr. Oudney, before his departure for Fezzan. This part of the collection, amounting to one hundred species, was merely divided into those of the immediate neighbourhood of Tripoli, and those from the mountains of Tarhona and Imsa- lata. It exceeds in extent the herbarium formed by Mr. Ritchie near Tripoli, and on the Gharian hills, which, however, though containing only fifty-nine species, includes .twenty-seven not in Dr. Oudney’s herbarium. The specimens in Mr. Ritchie’s collection are carefully preserved, the particular places of growth in most cases given, and observations added on the structure of a few; sufficient at least to prove, that much information on the vegetation of the countries he visited might have been expected from that ill-fated traveller. In these two collections united, hardly move than five species are contained not already published in the works that have appeared on the botany of North Africa; particularly in the Flora Atlantica of M. Desfontaines, in the Flore d’Egypte of M. Delile, and in the Floras Libycas Specimen of Professor Viviani, formed from the herbarium of the traveller Della Celia. The plants collected in the Great Desert and its oases, between Tripoli and the northern confines of Bornou, and which somewhat exceed a hundred, are, with about eight or ten exceptions, also to be found in the works now mentioned. And among those of Bornou and Soudan, which fall short of one hundred, very few species occur not already known as natives of other parts of Equinoctial Africa. A complete catalogue of the herbarium, such as I have now described it, even if the number and condition of the specimens admitted of its being satisfactorily given, would be of but little importance, with reference to the geography of plants. Catalogues of such collections, if drawn up hastily, and from imperfect materials, as must here have been the case, are indeed calculated rather to injure than advance this department of the science, which is still in its infancy, and whose progress entirely depends on the scrupulous accuracy of its statements. To produce confidence in these statements, and in the deductions founded on them, it should in every case distinctly appear, that in establishing
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